Borchers: One poll shows support for censoring 'biased' news

Wednesday

Aug 2, 2017 at 6:18 AM

By Callum Borchers/The Washington Post

A recent YouGov poll reached a disheartening finding: 45 percent of Republicans favor "permitting the courts to shut down news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate," while just 20 percent oppose the idea. And 35 percent say they have not formed an opinion.

Here's the kicker: 35 percent of Republicans surveyed say shutting down news outlets for biased or inaccurate reporting would not violate the First Amendment. Notice the 10-point deficit between Republicans who say shutting down news outlets is constitutional and those who favor allowing such closures. The poll suggests that 1 in 10 Republicans thinks shutting down biased or inaccurate news outlets would be unconstitutional - or at minimum, is unsure whether it would pass legal muster - yet supports doing it, anyway.

Such is the power of President Donald Trump's "fake news" battle cry - or so it seems. Beside the fact that this is just one poll, there are reasons to question whether the GOP appetite to censor the news is as strong as it appears and whether Trump is actually the driving force.

The YouGov poll lumps biased and inaccurate reports together when, in fact, there is a significant difference. Bias, however flagrant, is protected by the First Amendment; inaccuracy can carry legal risks, however.

While news outlets cannot be found guilty of libel for honest mistakes made in the course of good-faith reporting, they can lose lawsuits for negligently defaming private citizens or knowingly publishing false information about public figures.

And while courts cannot explicitly order news outlets to close because of biased or inaccurate reporting, closures can result from court-ordered penalties. Last year, for example, Gawker folded after being forced into bankruptcy by a $140 million judgment in a lawsuit filed by Hulk Hogan. The suit alleged invasion of privacy, not libel, but the point stands: Courts can effectively put news outlets out of business.

The Federal Trade Commission also has shut down websites that masquerade as news sources while publishing false claims about consumer products. Under strict circumstances, it is legal for the government to crack down on fake news, though not the kind Trump usually rails against.

It is not an extreme view to favor Gawker-style justice in select cases or to support the government's power to shutter sites that fabricate information and present it as news in an effort to cheat consumers. Based on the YouGov survey, it is impossible to distinguish between Republicans who hold these views and those who actually support empowering courts to squash outlets that display a liberal slant. The latter would be a truly alarming sentiment, but we just don't know how pervasive it is.

Is Trump to blame for Republicans' desire to punish the media? Perhaps not entirely.

The Post's indispensable polling manager, Scott Clement, and polling analyst, Emily Guskin, dug up a 1985 survey by the Los Angeles Times that posed the following question: "Generally speaking, do you favor or oppose permitting the courts to fine the news media for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate - or haven't you heard enough about that yet to say?"

At the time, 56 percent of Republicans were in favor, and 22 percent were opposed. When YouGov asked a nearly identical question last week, 55 percent of Republicans were in favor, and 12 percent were opposed. Results 32 years apart are strikingly similar.

Differences emerge among Democrats and independents, who favored fines in 1985 at rates of 51 percent and 59 percent, respectively. In the YouGov survey, Democrats' support for fines registered at just 23 percent and independents' at 30 percent.

Maybe the real Trump effect has been making non-Republicans less comfortable with government attempts to dictate what the media can and can't publish.